What I wonder is something like this.

A lot of the stone circles date to the Bronze Age, not the Neolithic. As we know in the early to mid Bronze Age stone was still the major tool material. Bronze was a magic thing to so many people. Why stone axes? Why not bronze axes?

I just don't like the specialised axe trade claims. I feel the 'posher' ones would have been choice items and valuable, but I think man's psyche is geared to appreciate beauty and rarity. To a man hundreds of miles from somebody else's sacred axe mine (remote but where a common stone is worked) the axe will be worthless (because it's from a common rock).

Axes like the ones of Lambay porphyry, a type of rock only found exposed on Lambay Island, would be very special and rare. Again it's interesting to note that the axes were only roughed atthe axe factory and finished elsewhere. It could be that this 'elsewhere' is just as or even more important than the site of the factory. An axe pollished at a certain sacred site could be worth more than one prepared elsewhere.

There is definitely something about certain axes, but I don't think anyone's sussed it yet.

I tend to agree Fitz, it's certainly my current line in what drove the class 2a's in Yorkshire.

Have you seen anything about Langdale distribution in Europe? All those babies around the Humber almost create a picture of a mamoth export trade to the continent.

You going to the BA conf?